Career talk

What’s this talk about?

  • My career path

  • My reflections

  • My advice to my former self

My career so far

STOR-i logo

STOR-i logo

STOR-i logo

Jumping Rivers logo

Whats the connection?

  • Consultancy

  • Start up / Scale ups

  • Lancaster

Victoria Coren looks to camera on the set of "Only Connect"

Working in consultancy

Pros

  • Variety of problems and industries

  • Learning new stuff

  • Helping passionate people

Cons

  • Being on the clock can be stressful

  • Getting burnt out

  • Wanting to do a great job for the client

Working for a small company

Pros

  • Get involved in all aspects of the business

  • Team spirit

  • Can build your own role

  • Autonomy and control

Cons

  • Limit to where you can climb

  • Scale up has growing pains

  • Fighting for work can be exahausting

  • Can be unstable

What has helped me

Personal thoughts

  • Be bold
  • Find what makes you special
  • Connect with your community

Be bold

  • Coming to Lancaster

  • Appling for jobs which aren’t quite right

  • Asking Nicola to join Jumping Rivers

Find what makes you stand out

  • You can’t do it all 🦄

  • Focus on maximising your strengths

  • Then shout about it

Use your community

  • It’s a small world

  • Communities I get value from

    • R Ladies / Py-Ladies
    • STOR-i & Lancaster
    • RSS
    • Local data meetups
    • #RStats

Community

What’s next?

Why am I leaving

  • Why am I leaving?

    • I found scale ups hard

    • I’ve stopped learning

    • I want to do a bit more statistics

    • I got burnt out, and I need a different pace

  • Moving to the NHS is going to be very different

  • I’m a little scared and a little excited

  • Find the data / healthcare communities locally and online

Questions?